4 Deadly Social Influencer Marketing Traps And How To Avoid Them

According to the 2017 State of Influencer Marketing Report, 86% of marketers use social media influencers to help them create authentic, branded content and drive engagement and traffic to their websites or landing pages. While not always the case, many influencers depend on their massive following to support their projects. Think Youtube’s PewDiePie who has an astonishing following of over 58 million subscribers and Instagram’s Huda Kattan with 23 million subscribers. Marketers who implemented an Influencer Marketing program in 2016 received $11.69 on average in Earned Media Value for every $1.00 of program spend, which is a 4.4% increase over 2015’s EMV average of $11.20.

So influencer marketing is really great, the problem is that the social media influencer marketing space is filled with mouse traps. To save your brand from harm we’re digging into four deadly influencer marketing traps to avoid.

#1 The Catfish

With some social media influencers charging as high as $18,000 per post, everybody wants to be an influencer. And not a challenging process towards ‘stardom.’ In August, influencer marketing agency Mediakix, revealed it had conducted an investigation that lured four brands into deals with fake Instagram accounts, populated with stock photography and followed by users bought for $3-$8 per 1,000. The brands offered the fake influencers money, free products or both.

To avoid fake influencers scams here are few things to look out for:

Asudden sprout in followers: Building a strong followership takes time and effort. If you see an unexplainable increase in the number of followers an influencer has, something is definitely wrong.

Quality of followers: If an influencer is followed by inactive users, lack a profile picture or have spammy usernames, you can safely assume that these followers are fake.

Low engagement levels: Social media metrics such as likes, shares, comments, retweets, e.t.c show the level of interaction. Avoid influencers with an engagement rate of less than 10% per post.

Comments: Fake influencers buy comments. Look out for irrelevant or broad comments such as ‘OMG!,’ ‘cool!,’ ‘awesome post,’ or ‘nice!’ More often than not, these one-liners are not made by real people but rather bots. Real people drop personalized comments, spark conversations with other users, tag users, and sometimes call out influencers.

New Account: Real influencers have likely had their social media account for years. Watch out for accounts that are new, post irregularly and have a massive following.

#2 Don’t Fall In Love With Big Influencers

Kylie Jenner may be highly influential if she recommended a pair of jeans to her audience, but she’d have little influence over markets such as retirement homes/services. Look for micro influencers within your niche. Micro-influencers are not traditional social media celebrities, but individuals who are truly knowledgeable, passionate, authentic, and trusted sources when it comes to recommendations for what to buy in a specific market. This set of influencers has 1,000 to 100,000 followers and often have higher engagement and influence over their communities compared to those with a mass following. In fact, campaigns driven by micro influencers are 6.7 times more efficient per engagement than those of their influential counterparts. 82% of consumers are likely to follow a recommendation made by a micro influencer because they feel connected to them and their content. How do you find micro influencers?

Head to your social media accounts and look for people who have interesting profiles, between 1,000 and 100,000 followers and regularly post content within a niche. You can also use relevant hashtags to search for micro influencers who aren’t following your brand, but are talking about products or services similar to yours. If you’re looking for influencers to promote organic food on Instagram, use #organicfood instead of #food. This will narrow your search and help you find the exact influencers you need to boost your engagement. If you don’t have time for the legwork, there are third party tools that allow you to search and connect with influencers. Buzzsumo is a great tool for finding key influencers in any location and niche. Don’t waste all your marketing budget on wooing big influencers, romance the micro influencers who have a true interest in your brand.

#3 Watch Out For Non Disclosures

Lord & Taylor’s “Paisley Dress” campaign is a clear example of what influencers can do for your brand. The campaign involved 50 fashionistas who posted pictures of the dress on Instagram. The posts reached 11.4 million individual Instagram users and led to 328,000 engagements. While the campaign was a huge success, there was one problem. The influencers did not disclose that they were paid thousands of dollars each to post a photo of themselves wearing it on Instagram or other social media sites.

This oversight broke the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) influencer marketing guidelines, which led them to take legal action against the retail company. Below are several important FTC guidelines to note:

Ensure influencers disclose sponsorship as close to the beginning of the content as possible.

Sponsored social media posts should include clear disclosures such as “#sponsored,” “#paid,” or “#ad” before any links leading back a brand’s landing page. #thanks, #collab, #sp, #spon, or #ambassador will get you into a undesired situation.

In a blog post, the disclosure statement must come before the affiliate link and above the “fold” or “scroll.”

On image-only platforms, disclosure should be over the picture in a clear font that contrasts sharply with the background.

For videos and audio content, there must be either an audible verbal disclosure at the start or a written disclosure on a clearly legible title card at the beginning of the video.

To be on the same page with the FTC, read through their guidelines thoroughly and make sure the influencers you work with “clearly and conspicuously” disclose the business relationships behind social media posts.

#4 Creating Content Yourself

Insisting on total control is an ineffective social media marketing strategy. Influencers know their audience the best and will be able to use their unique point of view to help create authentic content. Therefore, instead of pushing them aside, you should collaborate with them and create the type of content that consumers actually want, ultimately increasing trust and engagement for your brand. That’s why fashion brand Dorothy Perkins worked with fashion and lifestyle blogger Laura Noltemeyer (also known as @designdschungel) to form their content strategy for three exclusive collections launched in 2017. The campaign managed to drive the sales of 56,000 items from the collection – an enormous 63% increase in sales for Dorothy Perkins. Don’t force your content on influencers, work with them to create authentic and creative content consumers will love.

Conclusion

The rise of social media influencer marketing provides many opportunities and as many mouse traps. Use these tips as a guide to help you navigate this world, boost your brand reach, and increase your earnings.

Leave a comment:

Philip Verghese Ariel

January 30, 2018

Hi Adebisi, What an interesting and timely share. 🙂 I found this post curated on the pages of Inbound by Bill and I upvoted the post and shared the following comment:

In fact, this is a timely alert. The 4 traps the author @biswag brought out in this post is really informative. The #1 in line the Catfish is really notable. under this the subhead ‘comments’ is indeed a great point to note, many vague comments are appearing these days to get backlinks to their pages, the examples pointed out are no doubt shows they are fakes. I have posted an interesting article in this regard on my page about such fake commenters.

Thanks for the shout out regarding these mouse traps one need to check properly before entering.

Great tips shared! Indeed a wonderful guide!

Keep sharing.

Best Regards

~ Phil #pvariel @PVAriel

Krishna Rg

February 1, 2018

@Adebisi Nice post. I completely agree. I also feel it would be more beneficial to get into partnerships with micro-influencers than the big ones.

bbrian017

February 1, 2018

Really fantastic post, I can relate to two points, I remember when I first started John Chow and Darren Rowse were big in the blogosphere and you can see many bloggers were “In Love With Big Influencers”. Second being all the disclosures websites have now these days compared to 2005.

Michelle Mire

February 2, 2018

Great article. Loved it. Very informative.

Kuan Leong Yong

February 3, 2018

The industry is new, hyped up, and glamourous, the result of which is too many people are trying to join or to try it. Here in Singapore, we just had a controversy over the government paying several instagram influencers to promote the coming national budget. Without surprise, savvy net users quickly pointed the ones hired aren’t exactly known for financial prudence or management, and curiously have followers that aren’t even Singaporeans.